CSS

Think of CSS as synonymous to Web Standards Compliance?

A client just pointed out an error to me. I had been using CSS as a short-hand way of referring to Standards Compliance. The use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is such a large part of Web Standards Compliance, they have become almost synonymous to me, but they are not, in fact, synonymous.

Advantages to CSS

Sites will often use CSS to control content styling for things like fonts, headers, links, and tables. This separates many of the style attributes from the page content. There are a number of advantages to doing this:

• Pages easier for search engines to index and can be faster to load.
• Having style controls located in one place promotes stylistic consistency and makes it easier to maintain or change styles.

Advantages of Web Standards Compliance

It is possible (and even common), to have a site that utilizes CSS that does not adhere to web standards. Such sites, therefore, do not reap the full benefits availed through compliance to web standards. Benefits like:

• Better Search Engine Indexing
• Better Accessibility for wider range of browsers and devices
• Better accessibility for wider range of users
• Faster load times
• Ease of update and maintenance
• Ease of printing

Sites that use CSS will often use tables for layout

Generally, what we find is that although a site uses CSS for styles, the site layout is implemented using a complex system of nested tables.